Donovan R. Cook III is an American film director, producer, and storyboard artist, best known for directing the Disney animated feature films: Return to Never Land and Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers.
Cook was born in 1968. He graduated from the California Institute of the Arts in 1990 and has worked on several different Disney animated movies, such as The Little Mermaid and the Mickey Mouse adaptation of The Prince and the Pauper.
In 1992, he created the Emmy-nominated TV series 2 Stupid Dogs for Hanna-Barbera. The style he revived in 2 Stupid Dogs has been emulated and copied numerous times since. He gained the idea from two stray dogs roaming in his apartment and tried to sell it when Hanna-Barbera bought it. Secret Squirrel was one of his favorite H-B cartoons which he watched in the 1970s, which influenced him to revive the series as Super Secret Squirrel.
Cook then returned to Disney in 1997, where he developed and produced the series Nightmare Ned. In 1998, he returned to feature animation when he co-directed Return to Never Land for Disney. In 2001, he took on the challenge of directing the first feature-length film of Mickey Mouse series characters: Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy. The film Mickey, Donald, and Goofy: The Three Musketeers premiered worldwide on DVD in 2004. He also served as a director for Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.
Cook was originally scheduled to co-direct the Fox animated film Space Chimps, but he would be subsequently scrapped from the project.
His latest project was the low-budget indie film Ride-share: The Movie the first film ever to be shot on the iPhone 4. It was released on April 12, 2011, on the Buffalo Niagara Film Festival, being subsequently shown on the Honolulu Film Awards. It has won positive reviews.
